Iowa Cops ‘Spied’ on Capitol Visitors with Betting Tech, Lawmaker Claims

• Lawmaker says Capitol geofenced before student betting probe
• GeoComply software tracked apps without warrants, lawsuit alleges
• Surveillance sparked privacy outcry, tech access later revoked

Iowa’s Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) trained geofencing technology on the state Capitol building before using it in a wider investigation that targeted student-athletes for illegal sports betting, a state lawmaker claimed Wednesday.

Rep. Megan Jones (R-Sioux Rapids) said she was outraged at the DCI’s actions, adding they amounted to a huge violation of privacy rights.

In late 2023, dozens of college athletes were accused of gambling violations as a result of a DCI investigation that used GeoComply’s Kibana software to detect bets placed on campus.

Fifteen were charged, largely with underage gambling. A handful were also charged with felony identity theft because they bet using accounts that belonged to other people, such as their mothers or girlfriends.

DC-I Spy

GeoComply is a technology company that provides geolocation compliance and fraud prevention services, primarily for the sports betting industry. The technology allows betting companies to digitally “ringfence” their services within state borders, ensuring out-of-state players cannot place bets in violation of state law.

GeoComply made Kibana available to law enforcement agencies for use in detecting “hotspots” – areas where a large concentration of bets was occurring – as part of an effort to combat fraud.

In January 2024, GeoComply revoked the DCI’s Kibana privileges after it learned how agents had been using the software.

In March 2024, state prosecutors dropped charges against the student-athletes over concerns that their constitutional rights against warrantless searches had been violated.

A month later, 26 students – many of whose athletic careers had been derailed by the investigation – sued, alleging just that.

Ring-Fencing the Capitol

It was during the evidence-gathering process for this lawsuit that the DCI’s geofencing of the Iowa Capitol was uncovered, Jones said.

“This building is a place where people come to seek redress against their government, and people should be free to walk in the doors of this building and be free to speak their minds to their legislators and their government, and no one should feel that they are being spied on,” she told reporters.

… People should know when they walk in this door that their rights are protected and never should there ever be a chilling effect on that right,” she added.

Tawny Kruse, a spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Public Safety, which oversees the DCI, did not deny when quizzed by Cedar Rapids-based newspaper The Gazette that the Iowa Capitol had been used to test the software. But she said at no point had personally identified information been accessed or used.

“It merely showed the existence of an anonymized datapoint that indicated a sportsbook app had been opened,” she claimed.

Jones said Iowa could be facing the “biggest class-action lawsuit in its history” as a result of the DCI’s actions.